


Help My Lifeless Frame to Breathe

by BeesKnees



Series: In Trials of Love [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, American Sign Language, Annie Cresta-Centric, Avox, F/M, Finnick Odair Lives, Finnick Odair-Centric, Odesta Writers' Heartbreak, Odesta Writers' Heartbreak Challenge, Pregnancy, Sign Language, Victors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3643890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesKnees/pseuds/BeesKnees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finnick Odair survives the war. Not all of him comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help My Lifeless Frame to Breathe

The victors don't forget. Snow may be under lock and key, condemned to death. Damned by whatever's left of Panem, but the victors don't forget he is dangerous. It is written on their skin, stamped indelibly on the grey matter of their brains. The rest of the world dismisses him, but the victors are right not to. A dying creature has nothing left to lose. His strikes may lack finesse, but that doesn't lessen the sting of the poison any.

No one will remember later how Johanna got into see him, or even why she was there. When Snow whispers one of his truths, it hits at the heart of her all the same. Her shoulders drop visibly on the screen. (Her face isn't shown on the camera, but it is stricken, life ripped from her once again.) 

_He can't hurt me. There's no one left that I love._

(Beetee and Haymitch will spend the next two hours debating over whether or not to show Annie.)

Johanna takes matters into her hands, grabs Annie by her elbow, steers her in front of the nearest screen. Sits her down, but keeps her hand locked on Annie's. Her stomach is still flat, no sign of what the doctors have already told her.

Snow smiles on screen. 

“Finnick Odair isn't dead.”

…

(Finnick had never believed he deserved her, and Annie knows this. It was woven into every second of every day when they were first together. Finnick held his breath around her, waiting for her to find someone else, waiting for her to tire of him. He had never let himself believe there was a tomorrow. He had tried to be grounded from minute to minute, cautiously enjoying whatever the present entailed. He appreciated each yesterday only when he knew it couldn't be stolen from him. They were together for two years before he finally relaxed into them, before he let himself know that she loved him as much as he loved her.

When it was announced the victors were being reaped for the Quarter Quell, he acted as if it was inevitable. As if their happiness was something that was always going to be stolen from them. He had been proved true, he thought: There was no tomorrow for them.)

…

Annie doesn't want to forgive herself. She should have known, shouldn't she? That he wasn't dead? (Isn't that what they always say in the stories? As if there was some magical bond linking two people just because they were in love? Shouldn't she have _felt_ that he was still alive out there?)

Johanna scoffs at this notion. (And it helps a little bit, really it does.)

Beetee begins to scour through the Capitol's video system, anything that remained of Cressida's team footage, trying to prove or disprove what Snow has said. On the surface it seems clear: The mutt biting into Finnick's neck, and then the explosion that followed. How could anyone survive that? (No one, Annie thinks mutely. Not even Finnick Odair, who has risen from celebrity to legend to martyr.) 

This knowledge tears her apart. It is hope and devastation, hand in hand. (Can she allow herself to hope Finnick is still alive? How can she not? But she is afraid to be wounded again, because she knows, better than anyone, she must be above reproach if she is going to keep their baby. _They_ will want to take him from her: mad, unfit, crazy. She wants Finnick with a desperate intensity. Her hands shake.

She is back in the basement of the tribute center. On one side, Snow makes Johanna fear water. On the other, Katniss is stripped from Peeta. Annie waits for them to come for her. 

The anticipation is worse.)

…

Beetee finds him.

Snow has a network underground, entire buildings lingering beneath the surface where his enemies were stowed away, where torture could easily take place. Where the testing grounds for the Hunger Games existed, mutts allowed to run wild, explore the full extent of their abilities. The existence of such a place is no surprise to anyone. The extent of it is really the shocking part, the shadow underworld of the Capitol. 

This is what they learn: The mutts saved Finnick from the blast, incapacitating him with the bite, and then dragging him neatly away, returning him to the clutches of Snow. He is healed, and then moved throughout this underground, a pointless game of cat and mouse, where they try to keep ahead of the rebels.

But eventually they are caught. Finnick is brought aboveground, moved to a proper hospital. 

Katniss is the first to see him. (This isn't done on purpose, is just the result of odd circumstances.) Johanna and Annie arrive soon after. Haymitch is in the hallway along with a half dozen or so of Coin's men. He stands out, his expression oddly somber.

Katniss comes stumbling out of the room. She doesn't manage to say anything, just looks wide-eyed and hunted in the way that she has since Prim died. She looks at Annie for a moment, and then is gone, rushing down the hallway, ahead of the team that is supposed to be looking after her.

Annie reaches for the door, her heart tattooing a mantra on the inside of her ribs. (Finnick is on the other side of this door. Her Finnick. Her Finnick who she thought she was dead and gone; her Finnick, whose ashes she thought she wouldn't even be able to spread at sea. Resurrected. And that's everything she ever wanted, isn't it? Snow leers at her in the back of her mind, smiling on the camera.)

Haymitch catches her around the waist, making her stop. She almost fights him.

“Annie,” he says. (He rarely says any of their names, as if using them is admission he cares about them. As if they are something else to be taken away.)

“He's not...” Haymitch starts to say. 

He's trying to say more, searching for words he doesn't find. His expression is a warning. 

“He's not the same,” Haymitch settles for.

But she doesn't care. Because she needs to be on the other side of the door. She needs to be with Finnick. (This is how it felt when she was the one returning from the Capitol. She had been waiting, waiting in that room for his face to appear, to know that everything Snow had said about him was a lie.)

Haymitch lets go of her, and Annie pushes the door open. The too-clean smell, the antiseptic sting of it, scares her at first. He's surrounded by an array of machines, counting out his heartbeat, making sure he's still alive. (And he is, he is. She can see the rise and fall of the chest from here, even though he's curled up on his side. Both his hands are fisted up by his face.) His neck is still bandaged, a shock of white against his too-pale skin.

The rest of the world falls away. Annie forgets about the flock of people waiting for them outside. She forgets about Snow rotting away, about Coin's desperate cling to power. She walks over to his bed, her footsteps quiet. She doesn't sit in the chair. She stands next to the side of the bed he is pressed against and runs her fingers through his hair. The simplicity of it makes her start crying, tears welling down her cheeks, although she is silent. He looks small, something she never thought she would attribute with him; he always seemed larger than life, even when they were home, when he was just _him_.

He opens his eyes, looks up at her slowly. 

“Finnick,” she whispers.

He moves toward her, the motions halting. His arms wrap around her waist, and he buries his face in against her stomach. (He doesn't know, doesn't know about the little life growing inside of her.) He weeps, the sounds jagged and wrong in her ears. (She knows. It's then that she knows what happened.) 

She crawls into bed with him, and he clings to her, his face pillowed against her shoulder. She lets him cry, her hands in his hair, down his back. He eventually falls back asleep against her, and Annie can't stop crying herself. 

Johanna comes in an hour later, but she remains tight against the wall, as if she's afraid to step in too close. She is taught, lips thin, shoulders high.

“They made him an Avox,” Johanna says, and she's the only one who will dare to say the words out loud. 

Annie nods, holds Finnick more tightly to her.

…

Annie refuses to leave the hospital. At first the hospital staff tries to make her leave, but she fights. She doesn't know if Katniss or Haymitch or someone from Coin's government says something, but they end up accommodating her. 

Finnick's neck is scarred. It's a strange sight, after years of every mark being erased on his body. He carries the pockmarked bite on his neck and the one from where Haymitch cut his tracker out when they airlifted him out of the arena. Annie kisses the new scar gently, but Finnick pulls away. 

He doesn't like to look at her. It's more of a rift between them than the silence. He doesn't try to answer her at all, not in the ways that he could: He drops his eyes when she talks, doesn't smile, doesn't nod or shake his head. He purposefully deepens the distance between them whenever he has the chance. It scares her. It buries in her blood, in her bones, and that fear starts to devour her more readily than anything else. She can't bear to have him here and not. She tries to be patient, she really does; but the tighter she clings, the more he pulls away.

“Finnick,” she begs, a week in. She has tears in her eyes, but she tries not to let it show in her voice. “I'm pregnant.”

He doesn't react.

…

The world falls to hell around them. Finnick is still in the hospital when Katniss shoots Coin. Snow dies all the same. Annie watches wide-eyed as these events transpire, her hands tucked under the little swell of her belly. 

Johanna comes to see her in the aftermath. She won't step foot in the hospital again. Annie always has to walk outside to see her, and they sit on the concrete steps. The fresh air is bracing and good, and Annie hates that she's become accustomed to the smell of the hospital. (Finnick is physically fine, but he won't try to communicate with anyone, is unresponsive. They send in high-ranking doctors to talk with him, try to persuade him to write, to draw, to do anything, but he won't. He refuses. Annie begs him, time and time again, for anything, just to look at her.)

“I don't know how to do this,” Annie admits to Johanna. She sometimes feels that Johanna is her last foothold. They hadn't known each other well before the Capitol, and there were so many signs that showed they shouldn't have been friends, shouldn't have gotten along. They are two very different people, but Johanna looked out for her when it was reported that Finnick died. She fought the world for Annie, made Annie face up to the reality of her pregnancy, and Annie is grateful for that. (She can see underneath the armor that Johanna wears tightly, sees the vulnerability that lingers underneath the surface.)

“I know,” Johanna admits.

In the coming days, Paylor is elected as president of Panem. Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch make their plans to return to Twelve. Katniss comes to visit Finnick before she leaves. She looks small. Frail. Annie is surprised at the sight of her; it's hard to remember that this is the girl who started it at all, who volunteered to protect her sister, who fought to keep Peeta safe. (They trade these dreams accidentally, slipped out from underneath them. They don't realize the ground is gone until it's too late.)

“You need to stop doing this to Annie,” Katniss says to Finnick. Annie is outside the door, knows she shouldn't be listening, but she would be happy if Finnick responded to Katniss in anyway. 

“She's your wife and she loves you,” Katniss presses. “Stop being selfish.”

…

“Do you want to go home?” Annie asks. She hasn't asked before because she was afraid of the same indifference, or maybe even him saying no. But she asks now all the same. She has listened to doctors tell her what Finnick needs. But she knows, suddenly, brightly, that they don't know anything about him. They have healed his body. It's up to her to do the rest. She knows that going home will hurt. But more than that, she knows that the Capitol isn't any good for either of them. It is full of bad memories, the place that has always tried to break and destroy them. Annie has no intention of letting it do so now that Snow is dead. 

Johanna has stayed in the Capitol – for Annie, but Annie sees the shifting discomfort under her skin. 

Finnick finally looks at her. He nods yes.

Annie breathes for the first time in weeks.

…

The publicity about him being alive is odd. Coin wanted to announce that he was alive with a bright enthusiasm. But his survival is tempered by what was done to him: Finnick Odair told national secrets to help the rebellion, and his tongue was forfeit. Not exactly a message that inspires confidence. 

They hold hands the entire train ride home. Paylor offered to send them back on a private train. Annie suspects that Finnick would want to decline, but Annie accepts the offer graciously. She knows they will be stared at, and she isn't ready to face that. Not just yet. So, it's just the two of them, clinging to each other on the way back, which is at least a little more familiar.

Annie also makes the decision for where they are staying. There are two houses in Victors' Village they could claim, where they spent all of their years together. She's afraid if they go there, they will never leave. It would be too easy to hide behind the towering walls, walking through the halls like ghosts of themselves. 

The war has quite literally made orphans of the both of them, and Annie's parents left her their house. So, she decides it's there they will go. It's the closet to a fresh start they will get. 

They have a small suitcase worth of things they accumulated between Thirteen and the Capitol, but that's it. Finnick takes it in one hand, and doesn't let go of her. He starts to walk toward Victors' Village, but Annie steers him in the other direction with a small smile. 

It's nighttime, thankfully, so they're able to get into the house without anyone seeing them. Annie opens up the windows, airs everything out. She puts fresh sheets on the bed while Finnick cooks dinner downstairs. (This is right for them, she feels with a fresh burst of optimism.) They sleep together, curled up in the bed, and Finnick smells like himself again – not like the hospital. Annie watches him sleep for a little bit, unable to help herself. She presses a soft kiss to his chest, and then drops off herself. 

…

He comes back to her, bit by bit. (She misses his voice. She can't deny that. She misses his teasing, his jokes. His smooth talking had always made almost every problem funny.) But with him trying, it isn't hard for them to communicate. She knows the set of his body, what the curve of his lips mean. 

When his sisters come and see him, the youngest is dramatic about everything that happened. When she leaves, Finnick rolls his eyes, and Annie can't help but bursting out into laughter. And then her Finnick is fully there, just for a few minutes. There's light in his eyes again, and he leans in and tickles her until she's forced to swat him off. He stills then, looks down at her, and then kisses her tentatively, softly. Annie's body thrums with awareness of him, but he's gone too fast, retreating. It's the first time he's kissed her since they found him alive. When he pulls away, she can see that he's afraid again. 

She pulls him back. She doesn't let him get too far. He closes his eyes, rests his head against her chest. 

“I love you, Finnick,” she tells him.

They fall back into their old routines, but they're made all the more important by the fact that they are married, this is their home, no one is going to take him away from her. He wakes up early, and Annie sleeps in late. He always makes breakfast, but they swap cooking dinner. (Annie is the one with the talent for baking, but she is afraid that anything that reminds Finnick of his former sweet tooth will send him into hiding again.)

They walk out onto the beach and watch the sunset. They pick up their old habits of acting like children in the water, splashing each other liberally. (The rest of Four adjusts to them as well; they stop staring any time Finnick and Annie are out in public.)

Annie's stomach begins to balloon. 

Finnick seems almost surprised at the sight of it, despite her hospital-bed confession. She's five months pregnant when she feels him kicking for the first time, a soft flutter of motion.

“Oh,” Annie says out loud. She reaches for Finnick's hand without thinking about it, presses it against the bump of her belly. The baby moves again, and when Annie looks up, Finnick is crying – happy tears. He smiles at her. 

After that, he starts working on the nursery. They transform the spare bedroom upstairs. Finnick paints the walls ocean-green. They start buying furniture, but Johanna sends them a sturdy white cradle. 

_She made it_ , Finnick writes in his scrawling hand. (He hates having to resort to writing to get his point across, but he'll do it every now and then.) 

…

Annie wakes up. She's not sure what woke her, and reaches for Finnick. He's not in his usual spot on the bed, and Annie has a brief moment of panic, before she realizes: Finnick is humming softly, his ear pressed against her belly. 

Annie relaxes back against the pillows, rests a hand against the nape of Finnick's neck. It takes her another moment to recognize what exactly he's humming. _Are you, are you, coming to the tree, where the dead man called out for his love to flee_. She shivers, fear running up her spine. (Mags would have said someone had just walked over her grave.)

“Not that one,” Annie murmurs. Finnick's eyes flick up to her, but he changes the song seamlessly, shifting to a sea shanty that he had used to sing her in teasing. Annie smiles. The baby kicks out in response. (It's the first time he's heard his father, Annie realizes.) 

She tugs him up when he finishes, kisses him on the mouth. There's that familiar hint of uncertainty. 

“I want you to touch me,” she whispers against his lips; it's not a command. It's a simple statement of fact, something she wants him to know. She's always been patient with him. She knows what his body is to him, that it's something he's afraid of, that it's been used against him so often. But she loves him – nothing could change that, and God, she misses the press of his hands against her skin, misses the way he looks at her. She's seen it. She's caught him, when he think she's not paying attention. At breakfast when he comes in from a run and she's just wearing one of his shirts. Has seen him when she's come out of the shower just wrapped in a towel that no longer can cover the bump of her belly. He still wants her. 

She knows he's afraid that it won't be the same, that he's lost something – and he has, but he's always known a thousand different ways to please her. And she's desperate, desperate for the feel of his hands on her. Even just thinking about it, a pleasant heat unfurls in her belly; she's wet, her nipples hardening against the thin fabric of her night shirt.

She wants to beg him, _please, please, please Finnick_ , but she doesn't let herself, because he'd give in, and she wants it to be his decision. It has to be his decision. 

His eyebrows knit together: He wants to say something, but he can't, and she feels guilty for even bringing it up. 

But then, he slides a hand underneath her underwear, fingers crooked, and starts to touch her. She lets out a sound that's high, embarrassingly loud, but she doesn't care. It's been _months_ , and she'd do anything to keep him from stopping. She grasps at his wrists, thrusts down against his fingers. Annie bites her own lower lip raw. She wants more even now; this feels too much like when they first started dating, and Finnick would touch her, but wouldn't let her touch him in return. He is aloof, but she takes it. In part because she is selfish, and in part because she knows that he will come back to her at his own pace.

She cries out as she comes, the sound pulled from her, her arms thrown around Finnick's neck. 

“I love you,” she breathes out into his shoulder. “I love you.”

He smiles down at her, and she understands. But his eyes are still sad.

…

Pollux shows up on their doorstep. Annie is eight months pregnant and feels big as a house. She is surprised at their new guest; she doesn't know Pollux that well, but Finnick is happy to see him, so he's a welcome presence in their house. 

She is caught up in getting the last things ready for the baby, and she misses what's happening at first. She walks in one afternoon to find them sitting across from each other, Pollux's hands posed in front of him. Finnick, looking intent, copies his actions. Pollux nods approvingly. _Oh_ , Annie thinks surprised. She heads out without either of them seeing her. 

“Will you show me too?” she asks shyly. So she starts taking lessons, mimicking the signs that Pollux makes, trying to memorize phrases and words in a new way. Pollux is a good teacher – patient. He's forever adjusting the way she holds her hands, making slight alterations. They'll walk around the house, and Annie will point to things or ask him how to sign something, and he'll show her. 

She wakes up in the middle of the night not long after, woken by the pain in her belly.

“Finnick,” she says, shaking his shoulder. “Baby.” 

Finnick is up in an instant. He heads across town to get the midwife, while Annie starts to pace the bedroom. Pollux comes up and sits with her when the pain is too much for her to remain on her feet. But then the midwife is there, shooing out both Finnick and Pollux. Annie starts to cry though, and Finnick stays. He holds her hand, makes soft shushing noises in her hair. 

When Tristan comes, squalling and loud, they both stare at their son – at their child, who is a miracle in and of himself. He isn't supposed to exist. He is in stark defiance of their odds, parents who weren't allowed to be in love; parents who were told to stay away from each other. A father who was sold away and then came back from the dead, a mother who wasn't supposed to survive in the first place. The midwife bundles him up in a blanket, and Annie can't stop crying even when she looks at him – fine blond hair dusting the top of his head, his eyes a shocking shade of blue. He settles in against Annie, finally quiet. 

She looks up at Finnick. He's crying too, not trying to hide it.

She lifts up one hand, tilts it back and forth as she signs: _I love you_.

His eyes light up with surprise, but then he mimics her motion, pressing their hands together. _I love you too_.

…

Tristan brings Finnick the rest of the way home. His fears leave as their son takes up all of their time. He is a good baby, really – he could have been a terrible baby, and Finnick and Annie would have loved him all the same. Finnick gets up with him in the middle of the night, because his humming is one of the few things that will calm Tristan down when he's being fussy. 

(The truth is, Annie is enamored with their little boy. She was terrified of being a mother. It certainly wasn't what they had planned. She had spent so many years hearing that she was crazy, wrong – but when she holds their baby, smells the top of his head, hears his laughter, she feels like all the pieces of their life have finally come together. They may both be broken, but they are healing – together, which is what they've always done.)

They take Tristan down to the beach and he joins in on their sunset watching, and when he's old enough, Finnick holds him in the ocean and sits in the low tide. Tristan squeals with joy, his chubby fists flung out toward Annie, as if he's trying to share what he's feeling with both of them.

Johanna comes to visit first, and she is obviously uncomfortable every time either of them pass Tristan off to her. She holds him at arm's length, as if she doesn't trust him. Tristan, though, lights up every time Johanna walks into a room, giggles at the sight of her. (Which Finnick finds absolutely hysterical. He signs his amusement to Annie – which Johanna doesn't understand the specifics of, but gets the gist of it well enough to respond by flipping him the middle finger.)

Katniss and Peeta come and visit as well, when Tristan is closer to a year old. They both look a lot better, and Annie happy to see Peeta. He is really quite good with Tristan, something that seems to fluster Katniss. They both have the basics of sign language now as well. (It seems that Pollux moved onto Twelve after he was in Four.) Katniss and Finnick spend an entire evening outside together; Annie doesn't know what they talk about, but they sign the entire conversation, Finnick's fingers flashing with ease in the fading light.

He signs with the same smoothness and humor that he once spoke with. He's back to artfully making Annie laugh, and she weaves in and out of signing, sometimes speaking out loud, sometimes using her hands. 

She teaches Tristan in the same way, saying words and then showing him their counterpart with her hands. (He is smart, their son. Annie knows. She can see Finnick's brightness in his eyes.) 

He tries to mimic her, and at first, it's just flailing hands paired with his baby-based babble, but Annie encourages that anyway. 

But then, when he's around 18 months, it suddenly shifts, and there he is, propped up on the floor among some toys. One of his hands is spread, his thumb pressed against his forehead. He looks up at Annie as he does this – and Annie understands.

“Finnick!” she calls sharply – too sharply, and he thinks something is wrong, because he runs down the stairs, looking alarmed. 

_What_? He signs as soon as he sees her. Annie grabs at his wrist, pulls him against her. Tristan looks up at them and then signs again. _Daddy_.

Finnick smiles, and Tristan, seeing that his new trick is getting a reception, repeats the motion over and over again. Finally, Finnick sweeps down, picks him up, and blows a raspberry on his belly. Tristan lets out a peel of laughter. Finnick signs _I love you_ – and Tristan mimics his father.

Finnick looks up at Annie, and Annie laughs, unable to help herself, because she doesn't know if she's _ever_ seen Finnick look this happy. He swoops in, still holding their son in his arms, and kisses her. 

…

Annie doesn't think about President Snow very often. The truth is, he doesn't have any place in their lives anymore. But for a fleeting moment, she does think about him, taunting and cruel, hissing, “ _Finnick Odair is alive._ ” Thinking that he had stripped Finnick and Annie of something vital in their love by removing Finnick's ability to speak.

But, as he was in most things, he was wrong.


End file.
